I just finished a book about missional churches called the Tangible Kingdom.  The call of the book is to stop playing by a bunch of rules of what it means to be the church that are old, out dated, and keep us from feeling the force of experiencing Christ’s commission to take the gospel to the world.  There were some things I loved about the book (Hugh Halter, the author of the book, has a penchant for involving his life in the lives of others and the result is powerful personal stories) and some things I didn’t care for (a bent towards being against the organized church at times) but that’s why we read.

As I think about the kind of life I want to live for Christ and the impact I want our church to have for the Kingdom a profound truth sticks out to me - We can’t impact the lives of others with the greatest message of hope the world will ever know if we ourselves aren’t allowing that hope to change our lives.  Halter titles chapter 6 Posture and he breaks down my favorite part of the book.  He talks about when we are living examples of how the hope of Christ transforms lives that we don’t have to go target people to tell about Christ.  Instead as we embody the reality of the gospel then others will naturally be attracted as God works in their lives (1 Peter 3:15).  Hugh says that they tell their people not to be “evangelistic” because “if people aren’t asking about their lives, then we haven’t postured our faith well enough or long enough.”  I think you can take this too far and use it as an excuse to never share your faith or speak the truth but it forces us to head Paul’s words, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” 

To that end, as a church we weekly allow new friends and old to hear the story that God is writing in our lives when they join us through a little thing we like to call the Watermark News.  Click on the link and check out some of the amazing stories that our church already has to tell of the power of God’s grace to penetrate hardened hearts and overcome our hollow addictions.